NATO drill incident: Norway hopes Turkey will accept apology

Oslo, Nov 20 (IANS) Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg hoped that Turkey will accept her country’s apology after Turkish leaders appeared on an “enemy chart” at a NATO military exercise in the Nordic country, a media report said.

However, should Turkey want to talk more about the event, Norway will be open for that, Solberg said according to public broadcaster NRK, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Prime Minister added that the relationship between Norway and Turkey is not in crisis and is “good”.

“We are clear towards Turkey, and they are clear back towards us. Now I hope they accept our apology, so that we can move on.”

On Friday, Turkey announced to withdraw 40 Turkish troops from the NATO exercise at the Joint Warfare Center in Stavanger, Norway, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s name and the picture of Turkish Republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were used in an “enemy chart”.

Following the incident, both NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Norwegian Minister of Defence Frank Bakke-Jensen apologized to Turkey, saying the message was written by a Norwegian national who was hired to work on staff during the exercise and the individual was terminated immediately.

Erdogan said on Saturday that the incident is “a reflection of a distorted point of view that we have seen in NATO for a while” and the matter “cannot be covered over with a simple apology”.